I ran a group through it, our campaign ended around the end of February. Our group was killed by Jhavuul in the final room. So we did virtually the entire campaign, as well as a few of the side adventures. The one with the crazy were-leopard in the ruined Temple of Nethys was particularly memorable, even if I have forgotten the adventure's name.

To answer your core question - does it generate the "Arabian Nights" feel. My answer would be that it certainly has the ability to do so. One of the primary duties of a DM, imo, is building and embellishing a setting and a feel. If you have any skill at that, then this will certainly contain the tools for you to do so.

As others have said, buying the Dark Markets book is key. Read and re-read that before the campaign starts. Get to know it well and do your best to project that feel when you speak. And as others have said, you can use the material if you want, in order to expand on The Jackal's Price.

Use every opportunity to describe the heat. Depending on how much you want to play of the Pesh dens, that can also be a good source of building the setting.

Don't just gloss over the desert travels (especially early ones, like the first caravan trip from Katapesh to Kelmarane). Use those trips to establish the setting.

Those themes carry over very well to the City of Brass. But be sure to mentally switch gears when you get to Kakishon. It's paradise after all.

To me, in all honesty, Kakishon and the City of Brass were the highlights of the entire campaign. But YMMV as always. The pugwampis were also certainly memorable - my PC's will be happy if they never see another pugwampi again, which to me means I played them exactly as I had intended. :)

Anyway, to summarize, the Adventure Path works and achieves the purpose for which it was designed. It has plenty of potential for great storytelling and memorable encounters and fights.

I think I've rambled on enough, I hope at least some of it was useful.

Edit: Oh yeah, we ran it using Pathfinder rules too. I found the conversion stuff at

I ran Savage Tide in the Realms several years ago, before PFRPG came out. I don't recall any serious conversion being required. I places Sasserine in the kingdom of Tashalar (we just changed the name of that city on the map to Sasserine.

We then sent the ship off the southern edge of the map to the Isle of Dread.

I don't remember much else being required to adjust things. I remember I had a word doc about some changes. I'm on break at work right now, when I get home I'll see if I can find that.

Looking at the time of your order, it was actually placed after we had run out of the $100 mini. I apologize for the confusion. The minimates for the orders over $100 ran out faster than we expected. There are no more coming back from Gen Con since we ran out there, but I believe the idea is that there will be a very limited number for sale on paizo.com at somepoint in the future.

Well, that would certainly explain why I didn't receive one. Bummer.

OK, well thanks for looking into it anyway.

Also, what about any of the other goodies? I spent $139.06 - wasn't there something else further down the list?

We are still waiting for our convention stock to make it back to our warehouse. It is en route, but we do not have an exact ETA yet. So, not sure about the promo items at this time. We'll try to update you as soon as we know more.

That said, things have been crazy, so if you don't hear anything by the end of next week, please bump this thread again.

We are still waiting for our convention stock to make it back to our warehouse. It is en route, but we do not have an exact ETA yet. So, not sure about the promo items at this time. We'll try to update you as soon as we know more.

That said, things have been crazy, so if you don't hear anything by the end of next week, please bump this thread again.

I totally understand post-con chaos, so no rush. Thanks for your help. :)

At $100.00 you should have been eligible for both the Pathfinder Battles Goblin Miniature as well as the Minimate. I don't know if we have any left currently, as anything left from the convention is currently en route to our offices via truck, and will take a few days to arrive. If you want to check back in with us near the end of the week, we'll be glad to give you an update on the GenCon promotional items and what we can do for you!

I appreciate the reply, I will check back at the end of the week. Thanks :)

Not a lawyer, but I believe in this case you should be worrying about "trademark" rather than "copyright".

Apologies for the incorrect terminology, and thank you for the clarification.

Jester David wrote:

Pathfinder is creating an MMO/video game, and both products sound like they're fantasy products. But the name of town being shared with some noble houses is not likely to cause confusion between the two products. However, it's better to be safe than sorry, so minor respelling might be a good idea, to avoid confusing Google searches.

OK, I can certainly do that, if necessary.

No offense meant against you, but I would prefer to hear some actual reply from Paizo as well on this if possible. Hopefully they can get with me in the next day or so. If not, I will follow your suggestion because that's the best I've got.

"Worlds of Magic". If you happen to recall an old game called "Master of Magic", it's being created as a spiritual successor to that. It was my absolute favorite computer game when it came out (an age ago in pc game terms, 1993 or 94), so I'm thrilled about this. So far everything I've seen about it is very promising.

I just purchased a kickstarter for a computer game, and in it, I won the ability to name a city in their game.

Well, I want to name it after a Pathfinder character I had recently, and her name is Lady Doloura Rasivrein. As you are no doubt aware, both of those names are derivative of the names of Drow Noble houses from Pathfinder.

So what I'm wondering is, would it be a problem with you guys if I used one or the other of those for the game's city name? Would it be better or worse if I changed the spelling on it? Like would you prefer that I change it to "Razivrane" or some such?

I don't know if those names are copywritten, and I don't want to break any rules. That's why I figured it best to be upfront about all of this. But if possible I'd love to pay homage to my character and have her immortalized in a computer game as a Dark Elven city. If that causes issues with you all, then obviously I won't do it. But I figured I'd ask! :)

Either way, no offense taken, love your game and products and will be a PF fan forever. :)

Sorry to be just coming across this post, it is apparently a few months old. So you may not even need the info anymore.

A quick perusal of your friend's spellbook makes is very clear as to why he's not useful in combat. He didn't really pick any combat spells! That's not to say they aren't useful...

But let's go through the spells likely to be used after init is rolled:

Rainbow pattern - decent spell for neutralizing a big group of mooks, if they have poor will saves. If you only have access to 2 lvl 4 spells though, there are more useful options, particularly if your other is a spell that is 100% useless during combat.

Suggestion - as above. Good if you're going against something with a lousy will save.

Color Spray - at the level you guys are at, most of the time you will stun a guy or two for a round, if they fail their will save. and since it's a first level spell, the save isn't that hard.

Shocking Grasp - decent damage, no save. But to use it, our mage has to get in melee touch range with the foe. And this is a guy that is usually flying and/or invisible, so that's not exactly his thing.

Magic Missle - The wizard's bread and butter, obviously this is his best option in most cases for combat. But if that's still his best option at this level, that's not a good sign.

I would say the biggest single problem I see is that even with such a limited book, he chose to take both invisibility AND invisibility sphere. Invis. sphere is one of those spells (in my experience anyway) that sounds awesome in theory, but rarely gets used the way you imagine it when you are selecting it. The circumstances are a bit too narrow. It's a good utility spell if you have a big fat spellbook. If you only know 4 lvl3 spells, that should not be one of them.

If he added 2 spells it would make a major difference to his combat usefulness, and those 2 spells are dispel magic, and fireball. There's a reason fireball is cliched, and that almost every wizard ever has it. Most adventures written for characters of that level assume that somebody in the group can cast a fireball.

Dispel magic is equally awesome. Make sure he has a decent spellcraft skill. Let him roll to see what enemy casters are doing. If it's a spell he doesn't want to see, he can try to dispel it. Then in other situations, targeted dispels and area dispels can make a huge difference.

I'll be honest - when I saw this thread entitled "Dealing with a paladin killing prisoners in game", I assumed it was being written by a DM figuring out how to adjudicate it. When I saw it was by a CN Ninja, I lol'd.

I will simply echo what others have said, after reading the whole thread up until now.

Your CN ninja has no reason to care about this situation or get involved. How he plays his paladin is between him, his DM, or his church. The fact that he's a paladin of Torag complicates this further, but in ANY event, your alignment should make it so that you would not care AT ALL about any of that.

Your choice to not aid the paladin in combat is not what a CN character would do - they would make use of allies as long as they're useful, because they would continue to help you. If you are working towards the same long term campaign goals, your character should be willing to help him achieve those goals.

Now, clearly, as soon as your character feels that the two of you are NOT working towards the same long term goals, he would have no reason to hesitate in going his own way, whether peacefully/amiably or not.

I have an urban ranger, and despite playing D&D and PFRPG for years, I don't have a ton of experience using animal companions. It's just not a class feature I've had many characters with in the past.

Anyway, I have an elven urban ranger with a hawk companion. I'm playing in the Crimson Throne Adventure Path.

He's got plenty of tricks, but I find I hardly ever use him. I imagined him being very useful as a flying scout, but the opportunities for that seem to be limited. Either that, or I'm just not being creative enough in my application. I keep thinking he should have a telepathic bond so I can "see what he sees" in real time, ala the Crow or something, but of course he doesn't work that way.

I don't really want to use him in combat, as his ability to do damage is minimal, and he doesn't have a lot of hit points anyway. That was never his intended role, which again was mostly mobile airborne scouting.

I kept thinking as I leveled up I'd find more uses for him, but now I'm at lvl9 and still not seeing it. It's not like I forget he's there, I am always TRYING to come up with ways to use him, but I'm apparently not getting it.

The rest of the character is going beautifully. I love his back story, plenty of opportunity for great roleplay, and Urban Ranger was MADE for Crimson Throne so far. Favored enemy - human has been HUGE since that's the vast majority of my opponents. He uses an elven curve blade and does tons of damage with it.

Anyway, any advice on things I can do to get more use out of the hawk? I just feel like it's a part of my character that isn't developed as well as it should be, both tactically and from a storyline perspective. Thanks in advance!

I'm a fan of corny jokes and puns, anybody that knows me at all will tell you that. But all the pop culture references in your room names really ruin this for me. Others may see it differently, but this is superstar, not night at the improv.

I think this is a really neat encounter, and as others have said, the map is sweet. But I just don't see any possible way for 4 adventurers to accomplish all of this given their time limits. They'd almost have to know exactly where to go and what to do the moment they arrived, which is asking a lot.

I think you're setting up a party for certain failure, and that's never fun.

Another note - great idea to conserve word count by using the GMG NPC's and making necessary adjustments. "Remove disguise, add trapmaking" - that's frickin' brilliant.

Tulsa specifically has two great local game stores (Top Deck Games and Wizards Asylum) who sell Pathfinder products, and I was pleased to find fun and clever gamers in the Tulsa area after moving from one of gaming's great Meccas, Central Indiana.

Thanks for giving props to us Hoosiers. I hope you don't forget us when you hit the big time! :)

Like I've commented on the other archetypes that involve drowning, it's bad - it's simply REALLY hard to drown someone in Pathfinder, since they get their constitution in rounds before they start to drown, unless you teleport water into their lungs or something so they can't hold their breath. Even with powers that reduce this - 5 rounds instead of 10 for an average Con is still an enternity in combat, assuming they don't escape.

Suffocation is a 5th level witch spell - a Floodwalker would obviously choose that as one of their spells and use it all the time. This would mitigate most of your concerns.

This is a tough one, and like you, I think I would alter the story a bit. Make Aldern one of the victims and have the Skinsaw Man be his brother. Have them find Aldern dead somewhere in the manor, still clutching the keepsake he was given.

Name of PC: Aamon Vosh
Class/Level: Cleric 14 (Great Old Ones, Void and Chaos Domains)
Adventure: Spires of Xin-Shalast
Catalyst: Rune Giant
Story: I Placed 2 Rune Giants at "The Teeth" to guard the entrance to the occlusion field and warn Karzoug when the party reached that level. It also kind of seemed to fit thematically as a nice welcome to that last major setting of the campaign.

Aamon was primarily staying out of reach and casting helpful spells, as clerics often do. However, he felt compelled to come to the aid of an unconscious comrade, and in so doing put himself into harm's way.

He was hit twice by a rune giant's longsword, including a critical hit, and also absorbed a shower of sparks. That put him at -13 hit points, and he has a 14 constitution. He therefore had ONE chance to stabilize before dying, needing a 20, which he failed. Svevenka had joined the party and arrived 1 action too late to revive him.

She was, however, able to reincarnate him after the battle, and in what I would call one of the greatest twists of irony so far in an adventure path full of them, Aamon's soul was returned to the Material Plane in the form of...

drum roll please...

a GOBLIN!

You know what's even better? Aamon still carried a +1 dogslicer the party had looted in the first chapter, in case he needed a slashing weapon! He's already started to see the Cavalier's horse in an all-new way.

Everyone raise a mug in memory of Aamon! (Even if he was a little creepy. Now he's just a little creep!)

It has a conversion of Kazaven's Necromantic Deathtrap in the Gluttony secion of Runeforge, however the only way to dispel it is keyed to the Turn Undead ability, which is now substantially less common than it used to be. You can see it here:

site has been super helpful in handling most of the conversions and saving me a ton of grunt work. I tweak them when I feel like it, but often run them right out of that when possible.

The problem is that nobody has created one for the 4 lovely ladies that accompany Delvahine in the Iron Cages of Lust - her alu-demon daughters Eryalla, Lelyrin, Voivod, and Zevashala. Now normally, that's not the end of the world, as I'm capable of making up my own, but in this case those chicks come from 2 listed sourcebooks (Tome of Horrors and Plot and Poison) that I don't own. Now, I know I NEED to get Tome of Horrors, but that's a paycheck or two away still, and we're running this room tomorrow night. So I have no idea how to convert these chicks while still being as true as possible to the concept of the source. I don't know what they get from where.

I could always just run them from the module as written, switching grapple for CMB/CMD and all that, but if somebody has something else that's a more effective use of the source books and captures these lovely ladies better, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks! :)

The problem that manifested for us was that in reality, any given creature should have multiple ECL's depending on what class they were planning on being.

A creature getting high str/con and going into a wizard route would need a lower ECL than that same creature going into a fighter or barbarian simply because of the stat synergy.

This made it nearly impossible for a player to plan out anything without having the DM right there the whole time to put the check or x on any given combination- by judging what ECL that creature would have to have to make any given class work appropriately with it.

Take the Minotaur as an extreme example. A wizard minotaur and a barbarian minotaur were the same ECL but clearly not in the same playing field.

ECL was fine and well until you actually tried to use it for some of the monstrous baddies.
At least, for us.

-S

Half orcs in 3.5 made better barbarians than they did sorcerers. Did you give level adjustments for that, too? I think you're micromanaging. The ECL was meant to keep you from breaking the system, if you made a combo that was intentionally weaker than that (like a pixie barbarian), well that's your choice.

By the way, before you totally write off pixies as fighter types, you should read this:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871070/The_Pixie_Handbo ok?pg=1

Drow are not really that bad. Drow nobles are a different story. The issue is also that some powers that are really good at low level fall by the wayside later on, which in turn means the the player with the special race falls behind. Then you add in campaign specifics, and you end up having to much to account for.

Right, I played drow in 3.5 and their level adjustment made for a very weak character in my opinion, compared to the rest of the party. I still had a great time with her, but she wasn't equal to the rest of the group and pretty much everyone at the table agreed. But that's not my primary motivation for playing, I tend to be more of a backstory kind of guy.

I agree with you - the ability to cast darkness, faerie fire, and dancing lights was largely irrelevant. Most days they went completely unused. I burned a feat on "Daylight Adaptation" from the Forgotten Realms campaign guide so she could travel on the surface, so with that and the level adjustment she was essentially 2 feats behind most of the time. Most of her best abilities came from her domains (she was a cleric of Sehanine Moonbow, so she had Travel and Elf, great domains).

I get that some races just don't carry over to PC classes no matter what you do. I can't really imagine any scenario where an aboleth, beholder, dragon, or roc, is going to be fair.

But at the same time, I refuse to believe there's not some reasonable way to accommodate drow PCs into a party of other normal characters. Or even something like a centaur. I played a centaur barbarian/frenzied berzerker (once he got epic) in 3.5, and while the system wasn't perfect, it was still a great time. I think Paizo has a really great chance to (as they have in EVERY other case so far) wow me by blowing 3.5 out of the water and making a good system exponentially better.

I think making skills and knowledge about what your fighting an important part of a combat is highly important. It gives smart fighters an advantage and makes those knowledge skills worthwhile.

As others have said, in my games I have my players roll. A DC 15 will give them basic info, 20 will tell some more like DR or SR or whatever, and for every 5 over that, they get to ask me questions about it ("Does it have any specialized attacks?" or "can they cast spells/spell like abilities?", etc)

Story: Constantinos was the leader of the group, always suggesting tactics and ways to make the party more effective. An excellent fighter in his own right, on excursion from his homeland of Cheliax, he was well on his way to becoming a feared Hellknight.

After sneaking into Fort Rannick behind the waterfall and into the keep's dungeon basement, and handling Lucrecia without too much trouble (a lucky blindness/deafness where she failed her save and SR was beaten was key there), they were able to make favorable use of the narrow hallways to handle the ogres on the first floor without too much trouble. They posted 2 of the NPC rangers at the entrance of the keep to prevent themselves being surrounded without warning, and headed up the stairs. I was starting to feel that maybe I hadn't increased the challenge of the keep sufficiently (there are 7PCs).

That all changed when they got upstairs. Upon opening the door, the party immediately recognized Jaagrath as the obvious leader of the ogres, given his immense size and stature. Constantinos charged him and issued a brave challenge, dealing significant damage against Jaagrath's weak AC. But then it was Jaagrath's turn. Jaagrath Power attacked and hit Constantinos twice, dealing enough damage on two hits to drive Constantinos from full hit points to negative 22. His Constitution was 14. The Human bane made the difference - the 4d6 from the Human bane on Jaagrath's weapon between the 2 hits was 18 points, I rolled well. =P

Constantinos died as he lived - leading from the front against the biggest threat to the well being of his compatriots. Jaagrath would never admit it, but he was intimidated by Constantinos as well. A death worthy of any hero!

I've just downloaded this and it looks absolutely fabulous. Probably the most customizable and all-inclusive char sheet I've ever seen for any game system ever. And I really love how active you've been in listening to feedback and adjusting accordingly.

However...it's all a little overwhelming to be quite honest. I almost feel like I could use a small text file or word doc or something explaining how all the parts work...when do I use the "front solitary" and when do I use the "front summary" and what parts work with which and so on.

I don't generally consider myself unintelligent, but I feel like I could use some guidance. I doubt I'm the only one.